Towards a New Design and Teaching Methodology for Large-Scale Landscape Design in the Era of Digital Overload

Abstract

In this era of progressive digitalization, the precise choice of tools from the area of information technology poses a great challenge. Through simplified access to highly specialized software and hardware, one can make out a trend towards highly complex and often no longer controllable and realizable forms. Which methodologies and workflows within landscape architecture are suitable in order to react to the specific requirements of a place and the growing challenges of the discipline? Global urban questions and tendencies towards urban sprawl require strategies for solutions that integrate geographical, ecological, sociological, and infrastructural factors into planning. The integration of these parameters within design, however, often requires training specifically aimed at honing the skills needed to be able to sift through the existing data overload and find the useful data within.

In order to develop new approaches to solve these problems, the Chair of Professor Girot (ETH Zurich) within the Landscape Visualization and Modeling Lab (LVML) has pinpointed application areas for the academic education of landscape architecture that reveal practice-oriented workflows and methodologies.